SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the can't-seem-to-make-a-better-mousetrap dept.
Dave Phillipps has an interesting article in The New York Times about B-52's and why the Air Force's largest bomber, now in its 60th year of active service and scheduled to fly until 2040, are not retiring anytime soon. "Many of our B-52 bombers are now older than the pilots who fly them," said Ronald Reagan in 1980. Today, there is a B-52 pilot whose father and grandfather flew the plane.
Originally slated for retirement generations ago, the B.U.F.F. — a colorful acronym that the Air Force euphemistically paraphrases as Big Ugly Fat Fellow - continues to be deployed in conflict after conflict. It dropped the first hydrogen bomb in the Bikini Islands in 1956, and laser-guided bombs in Afghanistan in 2006. It has outlived its replacement. And its replacement's replacement. And its replacement's replacement's replacement. The unexpectedly long career is due in part to a rugged design that has allowed the B-52 to go nearly anywhere and drop nearly anything the Pentagon desires, including both atomic bombs and leaflets. But it is also due to the decidedly underwhelming jets put forth to take its place. The $283 million B-1B Lancer first rolled off the assembly line in 1988 with a state-of-the-art radar-jamming system that jammed its own radar. The $2 billion B-2 Spirit, introduced a decade later, had stealth technology so delicate that it could not go into the rain. "There have been a series of attempts to build a better intercontinental bomber, and they have consistently failed," says Owen Coté. "Turns out whenever we try to improve on the B-52, we run into problems, so we still have the B-52."
The usefulness of the large bomber — and bombers in general — has come under question in the modern era of insurgent wars and stateless armies. In the Persian Gulf war, Kosovo, Afghanistan and the Iraq war, the lumbering jets, well-established as a symbol of death and destruction, demoralized enemy ground troops by first dropping tons of leaflets with messages like "flee and live, or stay and die," then returning the next day with tons of explosives. In recent years, it has flown what the Air Force calls "assurance and deterrence" missions near North Korea and Russia. Two B-52 strategic bombers recently flew defiantly near artificial Chinese-built islands in the South China Sea and were contacted by Chinese ground controllers but continued their mission undeterred. "The B.U.F.F. is like the rook in a chess game," says Maj. Mark Burleys. "Just by how you position it on the board, it changes the posture of your adversary."
(Score: 4, Informative) by gman003 on Wednesday December 09 2015, @06:44PM
You make a number of good points, but sadly much of your supporting evidence is factually wrong.
The M-14 is damn near uncontrollable at full-auto. The "big improvement" was not full-auto, but switching to box magazines instead of en-bloc clips, enabling a faster rate of aimed fire. The primary improvement of the M-16 over the M-14 is the reduced caliber, which allows it to be fired for more than three rounds of full-auto without becoming an anti-aircraft gun, and allows infantry to carry significantly more ammunition (about 50% more). It's also substantially lighter. I will note that the M-14 remains in service as a designated marksman rifle - equipped with a low-power magnification scope, and locked to semi-automatic, it gives a squad better ability to engage at range, while still being lethal in close-range combat. We have a very large army - we don't need "one-size-fits-all", particularly not when combined arms is more effective overall. A good mix of assault carbines, marksman rifles, grenade launchers and light machine guns is what we need - and, shockingly, is what we have. (No, really, I actually am a bit surprised the Army managed to get that right).
The M1911's current problem is lack of armor penetration - for which the best projectile is heavy (which .45 is), but with a narrow cross-section and a high velocity (which .45 lacks - it is the largest and slowest pistol round used by any modern army). This is not so much an issue for counter-insurgency, but would make it practically useless in a war versus an actual army. Like, say, Russia's. 9mm Parabellum is only marginally better at armor penetration, sadly - we would be better served by something like the 5.7mm FN, if they could sort out the overpenetration issues. Flechettes, maybe?
The B-52 solves a much different problem than the B-1 or B-2. The B-52 was designed before anti-aircraft missiles, and was designed to deal only with interceptors. The B-1 and B-2 are designed to deal with the SAM threat - the B-1 by speed, and the B-2 by stealth. Sending a flight of B-52s against Russia or China would be suicidal - hell, even sending them against Argentina would incur heavy losses, at least in the first wave. The B-52 remains useful for efficient operations under open-sky conditions, but even then, a new aircraft would be measurably better. The B-52's engines are a particular weak point - they're turbojets, which are far less efficient than modern turbofans, even in the high-subsonic the B-52 was designed for (the turbojet gains the lead around Mach 2 IIRC - but even modern supersonic fighters use low-bypass turbofans instead of turbojets). This could be accomplished with a less involved engine swap, but the long-term cost/benefit clearly favors a new design targeting the mission parameters the B-52 currently fills. The existing airframes are failing, and with the machinery long destroyed, it would cost as much to restart B-52 production as it would to produce a new bomber.